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Carl Salazar
Carl Salazar (1900? - ) is the fifth and current President of Kramer Associates, the worldwide mega-corporation. He has been responsible for the creation of K.A.'s arsenal of atomic weapons. Salazar was the son and grandson of K.A. employees. His grandfather, John Salazar worked as a foreman in the Jefferson oil fields (presumably for Petroleum of Mexico before that company's merger with K.A. in 1892). His father, Edward Salazar, was a financial vice-president based in San Francisco and a personal friend of then-president Diego Cortez y Catalan. Carl Salazar himself was born in San Francisco; Sobel does not indicate his age, but he was apparently born around the turn of the 20th century. He attended college in Jefferson before going to London for graduate work in finance. After joining K.A., Salazar spent two years at Kramer University, a special school in Honolulu open only to company employees, before joining K.A.'s legal department in San Francisco. Salazar was deeply involved in John Jackson's restructuring of the company from 1929 to 1933, and traveled to the Philippines in 1935 to prepare for the movement of K.A.'s headquarters there the following year. During the early 1940s, Jackson singled out Salazar as his heir apparent. Salazar succeeded to the presidency of K.A. after Jackson's death on 15 September 1949. At the time of his elevation, K.A.'s constituent firms employed over 2 million people; with families included, it had a "population" of over 5 million. Soon after assuming control of the company, Salazar ordered the abandonment of the Philippines and the industrialization of Taiwan. By the late 1950s Taiwan had become the richest nation in Asia, while Australia and Japan were slowly turning into economic colonies. Salazar and Taiwanese President Chiang Ching-kuo became friends and golfing partners. Salazar had informants in several key positions in the Mexican government, and he knew in advance of Secretary of War Vincent Mercator's plans to nationalize K.A.'s Mexican assets in the early 1950s. In spite of President Alvin Silva's earlier attempt to nationalize the company's Mexican properties in 1944, some 20% of K.A.'s assets were still in Mexico. Salazar made no attempt to prevent the nationalization. Instead, he withdrew as many K.A. employees from Mexico as possible, some in secret by submarine. Salazar's next move was to launch an economic attack on the United States of Mexico. In late 1953, K.A. afffiliates ceased doing business with Mexican firms, effectively creating an international embargo of the U.S.M. Mexican oil and foodstuffs could only be sold with difficulty, and it was equally difficult for Mexican firms to purchase raw materials. The result was a depression in the U.S.M., leading Mercator to announce on 4 January 1955 that "Mexico's enemies must not go unpunished. We will push in Mr. Salazar's ugly snout, and make him wish he hadn't thought of his slimy plan to destroy us." Salazar sought an alliance with Governor-General Richard Mason of the C.N.A. in 1958, but Mason refused to respond to Mercator's arms buildup. Instead, Salazar set up the Taichung Project, which produced an atomic bomb that was test-detonated on 30 June 1962. Films of the test were sent to the leaders of the U.S.M., Germany, Great Britain, and the C.N.A. on 10 July, and ten days later Salazar held his first and only press conference in Taiwan. "We shall never use this device in the cause of aggrandizement," he said. "But we will not hesitate to destroy any nation that has the foolishness to re-open the Global War." By the early 1970s, Salazar has expanded K.A.'s atomic arsenal to the point where the company has atomic-armed missiles poised to strike at all the major powers. Salazar remains president of Kramer Associates in the early 1970s. Although Salazar is now in or approaching his early 70s, Sobel makes no mention of a designated successor. ---- Sobel's sources for the life and business career of Carl Salazar are a series of communications with Professor Stanley Tulin, specifically interviews on 11 November 1970 and 6 January 1971; and letters dated 15 September and 29 December 1970. ---- This is the Featured Article for the week of 12 January 2014. Salazar, Carl Salazar, Carl